Sapphire unleashes an overclocked, better cooled and higher priced 5870.
The new card comes clocked at 870MHz for the core and 5GHz for the RAM, versus 850 and 4.8 in the standard model. It also comes with a better cooler, one that Sapphire says will shave 15ºC of the load temperature of typical 5870 coolers. It will also heat up your case but it's a decent compromise: if you had a look at the 5870 article, you know that the card desperately needed a better cooler.
The PCB is still the same, so no surprises here. One of the first manufacturers to come out with a custom design will probably be XFX but we have to wait and see. The PCB is already quite good, featuring solid capacitors and a digital VRM.
A design reminiscent of the good old GeForce 7900GTX, with a big fan to help bring the noise down while insuring a very good amount of airflow.
Not much air will go out here, especially as the cooler's shield doesn't force any air out of the exhaust.
The card is already available on the retail for $409 since you pay the premium for better cooling and higher clocks. My choice is the Radeon HD 5850 but the fastest single GPU card is still the 5870.Take a look at newegg for availability.
2 comments:
The GTX 295 is the top card in performance, this is one of the reasons NVIDIA has no been in a rush to release anything. When Fermi does hit ATI is going to have to return to the drawing board again since their newest design can't even beat the year old 295.
Hi,
You're correct, I was referring to the fastest single-GPU card but didn't express that well. Post updated to reflect that.
Thanks.
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